ISA² Interoperability Test Bed in support of EU Member States

Costas Simatos, IT architect

The ISA² Interoperability Test Bed is an online, web-based platform that provides a conformance testing solution to projects developing cross-border public services. Project owners can use it to define their conformance testing strategy as a series of test cases that users can execute in a self-service manner, with monitoring from administrators to track testing progress and provide support.

Since the beginning of 2019, the Test Bed’s users have been making significant progress in their conformance testing activities. Moreover, we are starting to see significant milestones with regards to use by EU countries, the users of which are engaging more and more with the Test Bed.

Good examples of this can be found in projects driven by the European Commission that involve the interconnection of Member State systems. The Business Registers Interconnection System (BRIS) is one such case, offering the infrastructure to facilitate public access to information on EU companies and ensure the safe exchange of information on cross-border mergers and foreign branches between EU Business Registers. The BRIS project launched its conformance testing campaign through the ISA² Test Bed in February, with the Netherlands (Dutch Business Register) being the first to complete its first test suite within only a week of testing. After the first successful tests, the ISA² Test Bed will be used by more and more Business Registers to facilitate integration with the BRIS European Central Platform (ECP).

Another good example is the Insolvency Registers Interconnection system (IRI). It aims to provide a single access point within the European e-Justice Portal to Insolvency Registers of participating EU Member States. Testing on the ISA² Test Bed began as early as September 2018 with Spain successfully completing its first test cases, to be followed by Cyprus in January 2019 as the second Member State to successfully engage in testing. Next steps for IRI include the significant extension of available test cases in May 2019 to allow EU countries to complete their conformance testing in the foreseen period from 2019 to 2021.

Use of the Test Bed however is not limited to projects led by the European Commission. The Test Bed team has been in contact with the Flemish Government in early 2019 with a vision on collaborating on conformance testing for the OSLO² standards (Open Standards for Linking Organisations), a set of vocabularies and information standards to facilitate semantic interoperability within Flanders. Plans to use the ISA² Test Bed are based on the need to foresee self-service conformance testing scenarios for software vendors that could be used to facilitate procurement and integration.

These examples represent interesting scenarios showing how the ISA² Test Bed is used to drive conformance testing by EU Member States. The variation in the provided services, ranging from the validation of content based on specific scenarios to testing of complete message exchanges, showcase the Test Bed’s flexibility in addressing a wide range of conformance testing needs. Why not also your project’s needs as well?

Your feedback matters

As always, we would really appreciate your feedback whether you are already using the Test Bed, considering its use, or you are simply curious. Send us an email with your thoughts at DIGIT-ITB@ec.europa.eu or if you have a few more minutes, complete our online feedback survey.

The Test Bed is supported by the ISA²​ Action 2016.25 of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Informatics. Find out more about us and access further Test Bed resources in our Joinup space. Don’t forget to also become a member to stay up to date on our latest news and events.